It's in Your Voice: How Voice-Powered Meeting Assistants Are Pushing the Boundaries of Sales Tech.

Sales is changing and so is the way we sell.

Over the past decade and in the past year, sales has become increasingly remote with customers more and more informed and connected. As a result, the need for a truly seamless buyer’s journey has become more important than ever. Sales technology must keep up with these developments to provide real and meaningful value for its users.?

The ever-changing landscape of sales has also shaped the evolution of our Ciara product, and last week we launched our latest version, a new type of sales technology designed to work in real-time to accelerate sales cycles, radically improve results of sales conversations, and make deal management a whole different experience for sales reps and managers.

Introducing the Voice Powered Meeting Assistant… Our latest Ciara product truly delivers on our vision to provide real-time assistant software that guides sellers through their calls and puts an end to manual note-taking and ultimately CRM data management as we have known it for the past three decades. Our new Deal Maps are a revolutionary way of conveying training, real-time coaching, deal management, and documentation, all with the power of your voice.

But what does all this mean for the future of sales tech and how does our latest Ciara product help hyper-connected sales teams perform to the best of their ability for their customers?

Deal mapping to boost sales alignment.

Frontline sellers find it difficult to implement sales training into contextual real-life situations. In fact around 77% of learning is forgotten if it is not reinforced after six days.* Added to this, complex sales cycles, remote work, and highly informed customers mean that achieving real alignment and consistent messaging across a sales team is becoming increasingly challenging, e.g. when it comes to the handover process between Sales Development and Account Management. But given that 89% of customers get frustrated repeating themselves to multiple sales representatives, this process must run seamlessly if sales professionals want to win more deals and impress customers.**?

Our latest version of Ciara tackles the big picture barriers to sales success, namely lack of team alignment and unclear, unrepeatable sales processes. Designed to provide a complete overview of a deal from beginning to end, our latest product feature - Deal Maps - provides direction and guidance for reps along each stage of a deal, so that every sales professional along a sales process (whether Sales Development Representative, Account Executive or their team leaders) always know where a deal stands and what to do next.

Each deal map is updated automatically following deal-related conversations to ensure smooth and accurate handovers between sales professionals or customer success managers. With this development, Ciara has turned from a single-player into a multi-player assistant and will become the system of truth for everyone on the sales team actively involved in winning deals.

Voice-enhanced technology for accurate sales calls.

The value of voice-powered meeting assistants lies in their ability to support sales reps in real-time during their sales calls. Most sales representatives agree that customer conversations are one of the most important tools they have to win a deal, and ensuring adequate support during this part of the sales process can have a significant effect on win rates and customer satisfaction. Currently, sales reps lack support developing deals in the right direction, handling objections, providing key or complex information, and quick feedback on call quality or next steps. This can result in missed opportunities or unnecessary back and forth with prospects that add weeks to your sales cycles.?

Our voice-powered meeting assistant also produces in-depth call summaries, displays in-call objection battle cards, and provides performance metrics to help sales reps improve their sales instincts every time they pick up the phone or join a video meeting. As a result, Ciara delivers real-time contextual call coaching to ensure consistency in teams, and support for sales reps when they need it most, during their customer conversations.

Say goodbye to CRM updates and hello to automated documentation.

For most sales professionals the daily effort of updating CRM databases takes up far too much precious selling time, it's tedious and there are far more effective ways sales reps can spend their time. Added to this manual data entry leaves CRM systems open to inaccurate, unclear, and incomplete data insights which are not helpful to anyone and more often than not do slow the sales process down.

When we began developing Ciara, we knew from day one that we wanted to help make sales reps’ jobs easier, and so we implemented easy note-taking from the very first version of our product. Today our smart technology can save Account Executives a whole day's work per week in sales admin. Ciara’s voice-generated transcripts hold all call information, and with the product’s automated note-taking, highlighting, and machine-compiled summaries, Ciara takes away a large amount of manual data management by detecting what is relevant just from the transcript.?

The days of manually updating CRMs are finally coming to an end and sales reps have more time to sell and connect with customers to ensure quality buying experiences and more closed deals.

Invest in real-time sales technology for better sales outcomes.

Ciara’s journey to voice-powered meeting assistant has first and foremost been shaped by the needs of sales teams and their leaders. We knew that our mission had to center on helping sales reps achieve success during their sales calls: deals are, after all, won during sales conversations!?

Today, we’ve done that and more! By linking customer conversations to overall deal goals, and providing coaching support for sales teams we’re enabling high-performance sales alignment and real-time, goal-orientated sales activities for the future of selling.?

To find out more about the latest Ciara product visit our website or book a demo to see our product in action!?

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* “Sales Training Reinforcement”, Rain Group: Rain Group, June 2021.

** “32 Customer Experience Statistics You Need to Know”, Accenture: Bare International, July 2021.